Our Trip
We visited Hanoi in December, 2009 after a trip to Luang Prabang, Loas. We stayed at the Elegance 4 Hotel right in the heart of the Old Quarter. The hotel was nice with an excellent breakfast, but what really made this hotel wonderful was their professional customer service.
We stayed in the family suite which had plenty of room for all four of us. We chose this hotel because it enabled us to walk to most areas and we didn’t have to buy two rooms. The problem with this is the Old Quarter is very loud and very crowded as Scott describes Hanoi , “ it’s Shanghai on steroids”.
We spent 2 nights and one full day in Hanoi. We all loved the Museum of Ethnology and afterwards lunch on the museum grounds at the Hoa Sua School. This restaurant is staffed by disadvantaged youth where the proceeds go to the school and the youth get to learn a trade. This was where I had my first bowl of Pho and I loved it.
The other half of the day we walked around the Old Quarter and shopped. Our friends visiting Hanoi spent more time there and came back with amazing art work. We didn’t see too much “amazing” work but I think if we’d stayed longer we would.
That night we went to a fantastic restaurant called Highway 4. The décor and the food are indicative of the northern Vietnamese style and it’s very close to the Water Puppet Show. We all sat upstairs on pillows on the floor and could have spent hours there. Sean is still talking about the fried corn which he inhaled. Scott and I ordered a lot of food and it was all excellent! If you go, make sure to try the shooters. They are called Son Tinh Liquors and are quite tasty as well as leaving you hangover free as there are no additives. After the restaurant we took a short taxi ride to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre.
Fun Facts &Tips
Vietnam has 54 ethnic groups living there. The Ethnology Museum is a fascinating museum fun for the whole family depicting the different ethnicities and their cultures. Don’t miss the outside exhibitions, where you’ll see replicas of different houses and tombs. Kids loved playing out here. Make sure you don’t miss the Giarai tomb with wooden figures surrounding it intended to accompany the dead in the afterlife and to ensure an active sex life. You may want to distract the kids.
Hanoi has a population of only 3 million people but to us it seemed like 30 million!
Beware of scamming Taxi drivers. We were told by many people to only ride in metered taxi’s and keep an eye on the meter as the drivers will advance the fair for foreigners.
It is a good idea to use the Hotel transfer service when arriving in Vietnam to avoid any problems with the taxi drivers.
Best advice for crossing the street is to just walk out and hope you don’t get hit! If you wait you’ll never get across. Sophie got a little tap on the arm from a mopehead and flipped out.
You will need a Visa to get into the country. This is a painful process. If you don’t have a Vietnamese Embassy in your area, you need to procure an approval letter organized by your travel agent or hotel you will be staying in at Vietnam; there are also online services that do this for you. Once you have the letter (takes 2-10 days) a copy will be sent to immigration for when you arrive in Vietnam. You also need to take 2 passport photos with you and pay 25 USD once you arrive at the airport to customs.
Welcome to Hanoi, Vietnam
Sean and Sophie making tea at the Museum of Ethnology.
Notice all the people! It was crazy like this all the time.
I know it’s a bit touristy but everything we’d read said it was a “must experience” in Hanoi. We’d booked our tickets early (only $4.00 per person for a first class seat) so our seats were very good. It’s important to have good seats as the whole performance is done in the water with puppets. It’s a complete story all in Vietnamese with music and all these crazy puppets in the water. We didn’t understand any of it but we are still happy we went.
The next morning the four of us and 5 other people piled into a van for a three and a half hour drive to Halong Bay.